Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Monday, September 2, 2013

The Three-Decade Delay of a Nuclear Waste Repository

By Alan
Caruba

There was
a time when the United States was a can-do nation that built canals, bridges,
railroads, and highways. Now we are a nation whose civil engineers annually
report the dangers of decaying infrastructure. A perfect example of how
incompetent our government has become is the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste
repository.

In 1982
the U.S. Congress established a national policy to solve the problem of nuclear
waste disposal. As far back as 1957, the National Academy of Sciences had
recommended that the best way to address the problem was to dispose of it in
deep underground rock. In 1987, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designated as the
site. It was immediately opposed by both environmentalists and others. Congress
approved the site in 2002.

An
Associated Press article on August 13 reported on a recent decision by the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling that the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission had to complete the licensing progress and approve or
reject the Energy Department’s application for the site.

“The court’s decision was hailed by
supporters of the Yucca site, which has been the focus of a dispute that
stretches back more than three decades,” reported the AP. “The government has
spent an estimated $15 billion on the site but never completed it. No waste is
stored there.”

The
failure to open the Yucca Mountain repository is an obscenity. Instead of
storing nuclear waste in the most studied piece of U.S. geography in the
history of the nation, it is stored at more than seventy (70) sites around the
nation. The Yucca Mountain site was supposed to begin accepting spent fuel by
January 31, 1998, fifteen years ago.

The
Appeals Court delivered a serious rebuke to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
which has essentially been treated as a political instrument of the Obama
administration. The Court said the NRC was “simply flouting the law” when it
allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close site. This is
especially egregious insofar as federal law designates the site as the nation’s
nuclear waste repository.

“The
President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply
because of policy objections,” said Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh who wrote the
majority (2 to 1) opinion. “It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional
system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to
allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner
asserted in this case by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”

It is not
just the President and the NRC that will not uphold the law that Congress
passed. It is has been the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, Democrat from
Nevada. Kim Strassel noted in an August 15 commentary that “Mr. Reid has for
years single-handedly thwarted Congress’s will to create a deep storage
facility…Such has been one senator’s ability to render the 1982 Nuclear Waste
Policy Act, 30 years of work, and $15 billion of federal funds moot.”

The
arrogance of Sen. Reid, with the support of the President, is that of imperial
kings and other monarchs for whom their personal agenda outweighs the welfare
of the rest of the nation. The project was abandoned in the President’s first
term; in 2011 the NRC, a supposedly independent agency, allowed the shutdown to
stand.

The
present claim is that there is no money to move forward with the completion of
Yucca Mountain and it is true that opponents in Congress, led by Sen. Reid,
have cut nearly all funding in the last three years, but the court said that
the NRC has about $11 million remaining for the purpose of funding a review of
its safety. Congressional staffers who have seen a redacted draft of the review
to date say that is safe.

Nuclear
waste, the by-product of electric power generation at commercial nuclear plants
and of high-level radioactive waste from reprocessed spent fuel, must be stored
somewhere. Congress addressed that in 1982, more than three decades ago. We are
still waiting for a rational, practical solution because of politics, not
science, nor common sense.

The preferred method for getting rid of radioactive waste is to bury it deep underground and hope to never see it again. Texas’ approach to regulating radioactive waste is similar. Instead of a public airing, problems with a burgeoning West Texas nuclear dump often get buried.

Just one more example of Obama thumbing his nose at the law and acting like a dictator. Personally, I'm getting a little sick and tired of it, and the complete failure of Congress to call him on it and protect their place in the power structure of this country is disturbing to say the least.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.